In a May 2010 Future Salon, Dino Karabeg, Associate Professor Institute of Informatics University of Oslo, brought us his approach to making global changes (see Future Salon video). He has returned from Norway for a brief visit to the Bay Area and we have him for an update with the 10th Trimtab. Join us July 16 at SAP Labs North America, Building 1: Please follow signs to our room. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP. 6pm Networking 7pm talk/game.

Here is Dino's description:

"It is absolutely necessary to find a way to change course," wrote Aurelio Peccei, the first president of The Club of Rome, based on a decade of research and this think tank's view of the global condition in 1980. The Game-Changing Game (a real-life, collaborative game-like strategy), which we will begin playing together at this event, is offered as a prototype solution—a practical way to change course—which is already being implemented in practice.

Two years ago I orchestrated a dialogue at the Future Salon about `trimtabs for systemic change,' where I introduced nine ongoing projects with course-changing potential. I am now coming back with the tenth systemic trimtab; but this final trimtab is generic—The Game-Changing Game is a practical `machinery' for systemic change in any domain, or for systemic innovation, as I prefer to call it.

The Game begins by offering a choice of eight career or life goals. Each choice is followed by a reflection, inviting the player to aim high. A hint is offered why uncommonly high achievements are reachable within The Game. The rest—the substance—of The Game consists of a Vision Quest, where the players find a strategy to be followed along which such high achievements can be reached; and of an Action Quest, where a collection of already active projects, ready to be joined, is discussed and offered.

A salient characteristic of The Game-Changing Game is that information technology is being used in its projects as an enabler. The Game offers a vision of a mature Information Age, where `making the world work for all' is a business niche for information technology; and where a way to get there is offered by creating a synergy between business and humanistic interests.

You may be able to get him in Berkeley today. In a list of my top candidates to present at a Future Salon he would be in the top 5 and it almost happened earlier this year when the limit on campaign financing by corporations was eliminated by the supreme court. We were planning to do a Future Salon around that theme of corporate personhood, but his travel plans changed so it never happened. The bummer is, that none of the above talks are webcasted, even though it would be really interesting to hear what Lawrence has to say about the Occupy Wall Street movement. A couple of searches later, here is what he has to say:

Digging a bit deeper another clip of Lawrence Lessig addressing Occupy Wall Street, where you can also hear the human megaphone in action:

Even though we had the biggest financial breakdown since the great depression, so far no fundamental changes that I know of to our economic system have been implemented. It sets us up for a similar crisis in the future. This is the first Future Salon in a series where we are looking at alternative economic solutions.

One of the problems was, that even Moody's and Standard & Poor's AAA rated companies were falling. Their risk assessment was useless. This month's Future Salon speakers are working on solving that problem by bringing transparency and competition to risk assessment.

Please join us at the FreeRisk Future Salon on Thursday the 20th of August 6pm please RSVP http://budurl.com/j6n2.